MeiLin Miranda's Blog, page 9
September 27, 2013
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I kind of buried the lede in my "what I'm up to" post, so I thought I'd better unbury it. 
New subscribers to my email list now receive a little gift: a compilation of my answers to "Ask a Tremontine," a forum available only to patrons. Patrons have asked me questions about the world of the Intimate History, and I've answered them. This ebook comes in PDF, ePub and mobi formats, and you can't get it anywhere else--you can't even buy it. All you have to do is enter your email address and you'll get a copy:
September 26, 2013
Is it too soon? I don't think so.
All this pumpkin. Pumpkin this, pumpkin that. Pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin spice candles, tea, wet naps, forsooth! BPAL does a whole patch-worth of pumpkin fragrances every year right around this time. (I didn't get any this year, I have more of them I can use from previous years.)
So is it time to break out my favorite pumpkin? I think so:
Apparently I rolled a save against the autumn rain doldrums, because it's gorgeous outside today, to boot.
Oh yes, and that IS a Wil Wheaton "How We Roll" shirt, thanks.
September 25, 2013
Chapter 10 Episode 1 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Oktober 3rd
"The Ossuary?" shuddered Peter Oster. Adewole and the young Risentoner stood beneath an overhang near the marketplace the next morning, munching on oatcakes and angler mash from a street cart. It was raining heavily for the first time this season, and most of the island was busy filling civic water caches and household cisterns. "I won' take you," he said. "Thass haunted."
"Is it still in use as a burial chamber?" said Adewole.
"Thass haunted," the young man repeated, in the slow cadence reserved world-round for children, fools and foreigners. "I…won'...take you!"
"I take it the answer is no, it is not in use any more," said the professor. "Can you recommend another guide to take me?"
Peter shook his head in exasperation. He swallowed his mouthful of oatcake, wiped crumbs from his square, stubbly chin and said, "I tell you, none go near that. You best follow folk and do the same."
September 24, 2013
An update on me, and what I'm working on
Hello, my dears. I am sad not talking to you, so I'm going to talk to you.
So! This year has been kinda sucky. I've spent a good three months of it flat on my back, and not in the fun way. First I had pneumonia, then I had labyrinthitis as a result. It's an infection of the inner ear, makes you dizzy as hell. I still have it, a little. When I first lie down and when I first get up, the room spins like I'm on the Tilt-a-Whirl. It's kinda like being drunk for free. Oh, and pneumonia is horrible. I've never had it before and I hope I never have it again. I'm getting close to the age where I'll have to get vaccinated for it in the fall. Not quite there yet. Velvet Ackbar has gotten it the last two (three?) years in a row--he's definitely getting the shot.
(Related: Do you get a flu shot? I've just started getting it in the last couple years.)
And then there was the capper: heart surgery.
Some of you know my various adventures. I won't go into a whole lot of detail. Suffice it to say I have a rare, probably genetic condition called Prinzmetal's angina that makes my heart go beserk now and again, especially on a particular blood pressure medication that everyone else in the known universe can take without side effects, so medical people often don't believe me and give it to me anyway. That's how I ended up in 2006 in the CICU for three weeks with uncontrollable angina. It stopped when my heart stopped. And that's why I have this internal cardiodefibrillator (ICD) box implanted above my left breast. If my heart stops again, zzap, it'll bring me back.
Except not long after it was implanted, like three months after, one of the wires leading from it to my heart was recalled. Eh, we'll leave it in, they said, the risk of it fracturing is less than the risk of more heart surgery.
Flash forward to 2013. The battery on the ICD is dying. They have to go in and replace it, and while they're at it, they decide to dig out the defective lead and replace it, too. Seven years has increased the risk of it breaking and delivering repeated, unnecessary shocks to my heart. Day surgery became three days in the hospital.
But now I'm out and mostly recovered, all new wiring, all new ICD. I have to go through the ICD replacement in seven or eight years, but I'll think about it then.
So that's why I haven't gotten much writing done this year! I'm working now, though. What on?
I've written two short stories that my editor Annetta Ribken tells me are very good. One of them is at a major SFF publication, where they are peering at it and poking at it and seeing if they want to buy it. It's made it past the first hurdle. That's raised the chances they'll buy it from less than 10% to about 50-50. If they do, you'll hear about it and how to read it.
The other story? Annetta bought it herself. It's called "Vista Bridge" and it will be appearing as part of the Allegories of the Tarot anthology as the Wheel of Fortune card. More on that story later.
I'm working on an erotic romance that I'll be putting out under my Aria Afton pen name. I'm moving any erotica writing I do onto that name, in fact, I wish I could take "The Mage's Toy" and "The Amber Cross" and put them under that name, but too late.
I have a new episode of "Scryer's Gulch" written but don't want to release it until I have at least one other to release as well.
During the Kickstarter for Son in Sorrow I promised a short story collection based on a set of stories I wrote a long time ago about Temmin and Jenks when Tem was little. I've been working on the main--and possibly only, it's coming out long--story, "Standfast," for some time now and may be seeing daylight. That will be going out free to Kickstarters and I'll make it available to the rest of all y'all somehow, either for purchase or as a gift for signing up for my mailing list, which you should do, because things are about to get interesting over there.
I have the next Drifting Isle book outlined and will be working on it for NaNoWriMo. It's called Songbird, and it's about Johanna Diederich and Simon Ritter, characters mentioned in The Machine God.
Aaaaand, yes, I'm working on book three, working title Queens. It's being an absolute booger, seriously, I've rarely been this stymied. But I will wrestle it to the ground! It or me, and it ain't gonna be me!
What have you guys been up to? Which of these projects are you most excited about seeing? I really want to know!
September 18, 2013
Chapter 9 Episode 3 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Adewole looked in dismay through the last translated pages spread before him on the trestle table. He had finished the coda to the manuscript, and thus, the book’s not-quite-polished translation. He’d skipped over the spells; at first he’d assumed they were poems. With his bad habit of translating a section as perfectly as possible, poems took much longer than anything else. He wanted to translate the meat of the notebook.
September 11, 2013
Chapter 9 Episode 2 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Adewole walked back to his quarters, thinking on gods. Gods of chaos and destruction might do something like throw a city into the sky, but they always paired with gods of order and creation. Often they were two aspects of the same deity. Gods sometimes died in the various holy stories and myths, but humans never killed them. Only gods might kill gods. Risenton's creation myth was one of a kind.
September 4, 2013
Machine God paperbacks on Amazon and on the way for Kickstarters!
I've ordered paperbacks for Kickstarter backers with a few extras for direct sales. They should be here midmonth, which means I'm on schedule for end of month fulfillment and I'll have a few autographed to sell for Christmas and at Orycon. Huzzay!
I'll be working on my second Drifting Isle book, Songbird, during NaNoWriMo and will Kickstart it probably some time in early 2014. Songbird will feature Johanna Diederich and Simon Ritter, who are mentioned several times in The Machine God. They were originally the creations of Coral Moore, who had to drop out of the Drifting Isle project, and she's graciously allowed me to have my way with them. mwahahaha etc. Adewole may make an appearance, in fact, I expect it--which means so will Ofira.
Yes, I am working on book three of the History, but it's being a butt.
While it's sitting in a corner thinking about what it's done (I take it out now and again, never worry), I've been writing some short stories that have nothing to do with any of this. I may have some news to announce on that front soonish.
Chapter 9 Episode 1 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
September 23rd
The young Chorister serving as Melody Hall's gatekeeper was apologetic but firm: "The Choirmaster cannot see you, nay, he will not see you."
"But why not?" said Adewole. "Has a bad report of my character come to him? If so, I wish to address it with him, not through third parties."
"Nay, nay, you have the wrong of it, sir. Choirmaster Chandler turns away all from Dunalow."
"Why? What has happened?"
The baby-faced girl frowned. "Have your own folk not told you? Summon from Dunalow stole a Duet, sir--Poole, the creature. That 'un's the prince of all lies," she muttered.
Adewole must have missed some crucial events while buried in books. "But no one can leave the island without an autogyro, and there are few places to hide here. Surely he has been caught."
"He has not, else your Major hides him, the false deludin' man. And here I am, made a fool, Duet and heart stole together!" Color mounted high on her cheeks, and her eyes were puffy. "Now go along, sir. The Osters speak well of you, but Choirmaster says no one from Dunalow in the Hall ever again, and that's fine by me."
September 3, 2013
Chapter 8 Episode 3 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Though he'd officially given the slim, frog leather-bound tome the proper, scholarly name The Notebook of Heicz Vatterbroch, in his own mind Adewole had come to call it The Book of the Machine God. The manuscript repeated the idea over and over, a god-like being of magic and metal; whoever Vatterbroch was, he believed he'd designed one, though Adewole couldn't tell if he'd tried to make one. Could one make a god, or could one merely--merely, he snorted to himself as he sat in his cozy office--give an already-existing god a body?
August 28, 2013
Chapter 8 Episode 2 | The Machine God | The Drifting Isle Chronicles
Deviatka returned two days later. “I have been waiting for you to come back, Karl, I have found an extraordinary thing,” said Adewole as his friend came through the door of Frey’s stable.
“That would be fortunate, because Peter Oster and I found nothing of note at all—it’s why we came back early,” sighed Deviatka. He handed his gloves and cap to Wirtz and slumped into a chair. “Tea, please, Wirtz, and something to eat. I’m starving. What did you find, old thing?”
From his friend’s polite face, Adewole knew he thought it would be some new folk tale or other. Now, Adewole would surprise him as much as Deviatka had surprised him that first flight in the autogyro. “Diagrams, machine diagrams, quite unexpectedly complex, I think. I believe they predate the Rising, though the book itself is handwritten, not printed, and looks as if it were bound not long after the Rising from individual notes rather than folios.”
“Not surprising, a printed book couldn’t be as old as all that.”
Adewole told him about the Library’s books. “The ones predating the Rising—at least a thousand years old, Karl—are printed, not transcribed. They had the printing press a thousand years ago!”
